Chapter 23

Fall Hayes

My eyes openedand I sat up, completely disoriented, my heart about to beat right out of my chest. The image of Grey's face in my mind was already blurry, and it had only been a few hours since I last saw his portrait, but I could have sworn that I heard him calling my name. I could have sworn that I heard his whisper in my ear, even if it made no sense.

Something moved to the side, and only when I heard that sound did I realize, it was it that had woken me. We'd laid down to rest under a large willow tree at the edge of a forest, and it had been very silent here, but now it sounded like something falling was on the tall grass, something was rolling—and then a small shape moved fast to my right, rising toward the nearest branch.

"Shadow."

It was Shadow—Valentine's dragon. The same dragon that should have been in Mount Agva by now, starving himself to death because his master was banished. Because his master was as good as dead.

Yet he was here, and though I could hardly see from the small fire Quinn had lit up between us, I could have sworn his mouth was bloody, like he'd just eaten. Or like he'd just attacked someone. Had hurt someone. Had killed them.

His thin, long tongue came out to lick his jaws as Shadow looked at me, tail moving to the sides like always.

"Smells like fresh meat."

I didn't even jump at the sound of Quinn's voice. She'd been asleep a moment ago, but she'd probably heard the same noise as me and she was now sitting up, too, eyes on Shadow.

"I think he just killed an animal that was trying to sneak up on us." His size had never gotten in the way of Shadow before. He'd even managed to eat one of Storm's eyes and Storm was twenty times his size, if not more. And that snake he'd killed in the castle yard that morning…

"Oh, I know he did. I heard it all," Quinn said, rising on her knees as she moved closer to the fire to warm her hands, her eyes still on the dragon. "No wonder nothing's attacking us. He's keeping us safe."

Yes, that's what he does, I wanted to say.

Except it was so damn confusing. Shadow had always been behind me since I came to the Woods—I'd even named him that because of it. But then he'd also come for me at the clearing that morning like he'd meant to kill me, but…he hadn't really wanted to? It had all been just pretend?

So damn confusing.

"We should get going," I said, pushing the coat of the skinwalkers that I'd used as a cover off my body.

"Yes, we should. I think we'll get there much sooner if we don't have to stop and check the perimeter for wild animals every hour." She winked at me. "Plus, there's fresh meat anytime something tries to attack us. I'll be right back."

While she went to search for whatever Shadow had killed over there by the trees, I folded the coat and grabbed some cheese and bread from my bag and ate as fast as I could. I only had one bottle of water and I tried to ration my sips as best as I could so that it lasted me all the way to that mountain.

Storm.

I was actually going to try to talk to Storm, the same dragon who could swallow me without bothering to even chew. The same dragon I'd seen biting his own wings, trying to hurt himself just weeks ago.

Shadow was still watching me, perfectly still except for his tail. "What—you think I'm crazy?" I asked him, and he snickered like he usually did—like he was saying yes. "I know that." But I'd be crazy. I'd be absolutely batshit if there was a chance that I could see Grey again.

I sighed. "I know, little guy. I'll take it. Doesn't matter, anyway."

Even if Storm ate me, or even if I couldn't get him through that mirror, I was never going back to the castle. I was never going to be at the mercy of the Evernight brothers again.

"Look at this," Quinn said, dragging behind her the carcass of what could have been an enlarged fox with grey fur and a black muzzle, with long, pointy ears and a short tail, and paws as big as my palms. "Fucking hell, this would last us a month if we decided to stay here." And she laughed.

"Right." Except we wouldn't stay here, and when I saw the side of the fox's neck missing and its fur coated with blood, bile rose up my throat. I usually had a very strong stomach, but something about mutilated animals with dirty, bloody fur and the idea of putting that in my mouth…

"Hey, Quinn," I said as she inspected the carcass, and she was so impressed her eyes glistened.

"Yeah?"

"What's the Eighth Isle?"

She turned to look at me. "What?"

"The Eighth Isle. What is it?"

Her brows narrowed as she shook her head. "There is no Eighth Isle. We're the Seven Isles, remember?"

She sounded perfectly genuine—but then again, she'd been lying through her teeth since the beginning, and I hadn't been able to tell the difference.

"Why? Where'd you hear that?" she said and went back to inspecting the dead fox.

I wasn't about to tell her anything I'd seen or heard—especially that talk between Romin and Emil. "I thought I read it somewhere. I probably didn't understand it well," I said instead.

"Yeah, probably. Look at this—he cut its neck clean off." And she was back to being impressed by the fox, and by the way Shadow had killed it.

"He's very good at that," I muttered, looking up at Shadow sitting on that branch, watching me.

"Yeah, Valentine's been teaching him since he hatched," Quinn said, producing a small knife from her pocket that she was about to cut into that fox with.

"He has?" I had no idea Valentine taught Shadow anything.

"Oh, yes. They trained daily before you arrived," Quinn said, sitting down on the ground as she turned to me. "Then again every night after."

"Wow. Makes sense that Shadow is always so fearless in the face of everything." I'd never seen him turn away from anything at all. Even that morning when he was coming for me, pretending to want to kill me, knowing Storm would get him—he hadn't hesitated a single second.

"Yeah," Quinn said, throwing him a look. "Valentine was obsessed with keeping an eye on you. Keeping you safe. He didn't trust anyone else to do it."

My insides twisted and turned violently. "Except that time he tried to kill me." By sending me to Faeries' Aerie. Lying to me about the ring and the curse.

"Well, I don't know about that, but he cared about you," Quinn said, and again, she was looking at me like that, like she was blaming me for something. "He said you were almost like his family."

My poor heart.

It took me another second of reminding myself of the truth, of his actions, not his words.

It took me another second to remind myself that he'd taken me out there and had tried to kill me, and then had made me into a fool in front of everyone when I confronted him about it.

That was Valentine Evernight. Maybe he cared about me, but what mattered was what he did. His actions—those spoke the loudest. His words meant very little.

"And I genuinely came to care about him, too. But I'm learning," I whispered, more to myself than to her. I was learning not to trust the way I used to. To understand that almost everyone around me had ulterior motives for what they did, even the smallest, most unsuspicious actions.

Just like Quinn.

"What's he planning, Quinn?" I asked, and again, her head whipped toward me fast. "Why did he want to get banished? What's he planning?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Quinn said, then turned to the fox again. "Nobody wants to get banished."

"Except Valentine." And she knew it. "Tell me what he's planning." I was this close to begging her about it, too.

But Quinn shook her head. "I don't know, Fall. I don't know anything about the Evernights. I just know that your safety matters to Valentine a great deal, and I love him. He's my family, even if he doesn't consider me his." There it was, that look again. She absolutely blamed me for something. "So, I'll help you with whatever you need. That's all I can tell you." Then she stood up. "I'm going to put this away so other animals can feed off it. Be right back."

She'd already cut off a good piece of meat from the fox's body that I didn't even want to look at, then she dragged the carcass away toward the trees without another word.

Yes, there was a story to everyone who came into my life, and Quinn was one of them.

But right now, as Shadow and I stared at each other from a distance, I couldn't bring myself to care about anybody else's story but Grey's.

We walkedfor five hours straight with barely any word. Shadow circled around us, the sound of his wings a melody in my head that soothed me, and no animal approached us. No animal threatened us. Sometimes he'd disappear for a couple of minutes and come back with blood on his jaws, and we'd know that he'd killed an animal who'd probably tried to sneak up on us. I felt safer by the hour and, even though Quinn was constantly looking over her shoulder and to the sides, focusing on the darkness of the trees around us, she seemed at ease, too. Much more than she had been in the beginning.

We passed another town on the way, this one much bigger than what I'd seen of the town near the castle. This one huge with so much light from torches and big light bulbs hanging onto wires that zigzagged over rooftops on the wide streets. The buildings were bigger, too, and they had animals—horses that looked very much like normal horses, though I didn't see any up close, pulling carriages. Faeries and skinwalkers and dragon riders and witches, every kind of Enchanted living together here in harmony. In fact, the wide streets and the shops and the food joints were so ordinary that I could have been fooled into thinking I was out there in the human world on a Tuesday night.

Quinn wanted to stop and get an ale because that fox meat she'd cooked over the flames and had eaten right in front of me while I tried not to throw my guts out was still in her system. I made it very clear the moment she hinted at it that it was not going to happen. Who knew how much time Grey had left in that place, wherever he was? I was not going to stop for ale when I could be on my way to Storm instead.

And Quinn didn't argue. She just got us new bottles of water and we were on our way again, walking the edges of the town because as much as I wanted to explore the deeper parts of it that she told me about—the parks and the gaming square and the theater that was supposed to be mind-blowing in size alone—I didn't dare. If someone saw me, if someone even suspected who I was, when Romin came to ask questions they'd tell him about me. They'd tell him they saw me. and he'd know where I was going. He'd get there before me just to stop me, no doubt.

The farther away from the castle we went, the colder it got, and though at first, I'd regretted taking that coat with me, I was glad for it by the next morning.

We lay down to rest when my legs refused to carry me anymore, on a low hill near a large tree that Quinn believed was safe enough. We'd see anyone approaching before they saw us, and we already knew that Shadow would be taking care of any animal that tried to attack us. Even when she made a small fire to warm herself up, Quinn was still shaking when we lay down on the ground, and it took a lot to convince her to come closer and warm herself under the coat.

Even when she did, she was rigid as a goddamn rock against me, like she was that uncomfortable being so close together. We lay back-to-back so that we both had a visual of either side of the woods, but sleep took me within seconds. I hadn't been that exhausted in a long, long time.

And when I woke up again, I still felt like Grey was right there, just like last time. Impossible to shake the feeling that he was whispering my name right in my ear, no matter how senseless it seemed.

We'd slept for four hours according to Quinn's watch, and nothing and nobody had approached us. Shadow was still there right over our heads on the branch, watching, and his mouth wasn't bloody that I could see. He hadn't killed anything, at least in the past hour, and he was as calm as always.

And I was rested enough to walk for another day straight if I had to.

"We're here," Quinn said, as she used a stick to draw lines in the ashes of the fire she'd made the night before—what was supposed to be a map. "This is Mount Agva." She drew a triangle to the north. "We'll be passing by another two towns to get there—Mercen and Ivea. From this point on"—she pointed her stick to the second town—"it will be new territory for me, too. I've never been past Ivea before, so I'm not sure about the best route to the mountain." She scratched her cheek in wonder.

"I think we'll be fine if we just follow the cold." She said it herself that Mount Agva was the coldest place in the Woods, the only one that had snow.

"Oh, we'll get there, all right. But I don't know what's close to that place or what to watch out for," Quinn said.

I raised my head to look at Shadow.

"But he will." If that little dragon had stuck with us until now, I had no doubt in my mind that he wasn't going to leave my side until the very end. And if he was here, no other animal or man could get to us, at least without us hearing it first.

"Yep. I believe it. I mean, it's a damn miracle that we've covered so much ground without getting attacked once. I haven't even had to climb a tree yet," she said. "I think I might open a business as a guide for the Whispering Woods. What do you say, Shadow? Will you be my partner?"

I smiled, shaking my head. "That sounds like a good idea, actually."

"I'd make bank," Quinn said, nodding her head. "Especially if I actually survive this trip."

"You will. Of course, you will—you just said that nothing had atta?—"

"I mean, if I survive Mount Agva," Quinn cut me off. "If we survive it. Shadow might be good at killing animals, but dragons are a different story, especially dragons ten times his size."

I flinched. "I know." I knew that very well. "But you are not going to come with me up that mountain, Quinn. I'll be going to see Storm by myself."

She snorted. "Yeah, right."

"He'll eat you the second he sees you."

She turned three shades paler instantly because she believed me. I believed me, too. "He'll eat you, too."

"No, he won't. He knows me. I'm Grey's."

"He's mad, Fall. He's a dragon without his master—he doesn't know anything or anyone anymore," Quinn said.

I pointed my finger up to the sky. "Shadow is a dragon without his master, too," I reminded her. "And he looks perfectly fine to me."

As if to confirm it, Shadow let out that snickering sound that made me smile. He could hear me, and he understood me just fine.

If only he could talk back and tell me what the hell Valentine was up to…

"He is a freak of nature," said Quinn. "He's not even supposed to be here at all."

"Exactly. Because Valentine is planning something, and if you told me what it is?—"

"I don't know," she cut me off again.

"Liar."

"I swear it on my aunt's soul—I have no fucking clue," Quinn said, shaking her head.

"I imagine you and your aunt are close." She'd mentioned her twice now.

She nodded, taken a bit off guard. "She raised me."

"And she helped raise Valentine, too."

She threw me a look. "Meaning?"

"Valentine probably told her what he's doing, why he wanted to get banished, or why Shadow is so perfectly intact even after he got swallowed by the sky."

Quinn rolled her eyes. "My aunt doesn't know anything—or if she does, she didn't tell me about it."

"Liar," I said again, though I wasn't so sure.

Not that it mattered, anyway.

But Quinn laughed. "Why in the world do you want to go see Storm, anyway? You know he'll eat you. You know it—what could possibly be worth certain death for you?"

Grey. He was worth it. He was worth everything—and maybe it was because of the magic of the curse or the Blood Call or whatever else, but he was. This was my reality now, and I'd figure it all out just as soon as I took Storm into that mirror, and he brought him back here.

In fact, Grey was going to help me figure it out himself.

"Storm won't eat me," I muttered, though I knew there was a good chance that he would.

"Knock it off. Whatever it is you're trying to do, just let it go. I'll take you back, no questions asked," Quinn said, but she already sounded defeated because she knew it wasn't going to happen. That's why I said nothing.

Eventually, she sighed. "Fine. Whatever. We'll be in Mercen by noon. It's much smaller than Ivea, so we'll only need a couple of hours to get to the other side. From there and to Mount Agva, it will depend on how fast we walk, I guess."

Run.

I'd be fucking running as soon as I had a clear view of the road to that mountain.

"Then let's get going."